Chewing gum has a rich history; in fact it appears to literally predate history. Archeologists have discovered evidence that prehistoric men and women apparently chewed on lumps of tree resin for pure enjoyment. More “recently,” the ancient Greeks were known to chew mastiche, a chewing gum made from the resin of the mastic tree. In the Americas, the Mayans chewed chicle, the sap of the sapodilla tree and the North American Indians chewed the sap of spruce trees, passing the habit along to settlers.
The modern incarnation of chewing gum, however, began in the 1880s with the introduction of Chiclets by the Freer brothers followed shortly by the Curtis brothers who in 1848 became the first to actually sell chewing gum.
Until the late 1870s, chewing gum had little, if any, flavor, an oversight that was corrected by John Colgin, a Kentucky druggist, who for the first time added sugar to chicle. As a result, the course of chewing gum through history was forever set.
It was not until 1928, however, that a truly commercial bubble gum entered the marketplace as the result of a serendipitous event that brought Walter Diemer, an accountant for the Freer gum company, into contact with bubble gum formulation, which fascinated him to the extent that, without any training, he preceded to experiment for several months until eventually he hit on a formulation that become perhaps the most recognized name in bubble gum—Dubble Bubble.
Chewing gum is something of an oddity among confections: not only is it pleasurable to partake of, it also has been associated with a number of health benefits. It stimulates saliva production which has been associated with reduction of bacterial activity in the mouth, reduction in halitosis or “bad breath” and alleviation of digestive difficulties in people with ulcers or those having an excess of acidity in the digestive tract. Chewing gum has even been associated with improved memory according to some studies in which gum-chewers scored 25% higher than a control group on immediate word recall tests and 36% higher on delayed recall tests. Chewing gum has also been indicted as a means for counteracting the irritation caused by changes in air pressure during air travel.
It has been estimated that over $2 billion is spent on chewing gum each year in the United States alone.
The market for chewing gum being what it is, it comes as no surprise that considerable effort is being expended by manufacturers of the confection to improve their product. Among the properties being explored areas for potential improvement are flavor quality and persistence, mouth-feel and perhaps its most notorious characteristic, adhesion to surfaces.
The current invention provides a chewing gum base for use in the manufacture of either regular or bubble gum where the gum base can be used ab initio to make a chewing gum product or can be added to existing chewing gum formulations. The chewing gum base of the current invention provides chewing gums that exhibit superior mouth-feel, controlled firmness, controlled adhesion and other desirable properties.